Bart Vollenberg holds a unique position in the coffeeshop industry: he owns two coffeeshops in Almere and Lelystad, is a board member of the two national coffeeshop unions PCN and BCD and he founded the Epicurus Foundation, a think tank on regulation of the cannabis market. Epicurus has organized two well-attended conferences in Utrecht -‘The Transparant Chain I and II’- and took the initiative for the Grass Poll survey and Cannabis Connect, which now represents over 220 coffeeshops.